NCJ Number
200920
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 31 Issue: 4 Dated: July/August 2003 Pages: 309-320
Editor(s)
Kent B. Joscelyn
Date Published
July 2003
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This study examined ethnicity and gender in a sample of Native American offenders and non-Native American offenders and a sample of male offenders and female offenders using the Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) to investigate correctional strategy in the use of risk/needs assessments on offender subgroups to inform reliability and prevalence of the 10 major criminogenic domains.
Abstract
An important part of correctional supervision and intervention is offender assessment and classification. Many different methods of offender classification have emerged over the last few decades with the most valued being the third-generation, actuarial, dynamic risk/need assessments. However, with any new correctional strategy, there needs to be an exploration of the presence and prevalence of criminogenic risk factors between categories of gender and various ethnicities. This study utilized data gathered using the Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) on a random sample of offenders from a northern Midwestern State. The data were used to describe the risk levels across several different criminogenic domains (criminal history, education/employment, financial, family/marital, accommodation, leisure/recreation, companions, alcohol/drug problem, emotional/personal, and attitudes/orientations), as well as compare Native American offenders to non-Native American offenders and male offenders to female offenders using an item-by-item analysis. The comparisons between Native American offenders and non-Native American offenders revealed a higher level of criminogenic risk and need for Native American offenders on 7 of the 10 areas represented in the LSI-R: education/employment, financial, family/marital, accommodation, leisure/recreation, companions, and alcohol/drug. The analysis also revealed that the male offender population in the State under consideration possessed a higher level of criminogenic risk than their female counterparts with males scoring greatly higher on the mean scores for 6 of the 10 areas represented in the LSI-R: criminal history, family/marital, leisure and recreation, companions, alcohol/drug, and attitudes/orientations. The results have potential implications for criminal justice jurisdictions where a large concentration of minority offenders exists. Each of the subscales of the LSI-R, as well as the instrument as a whole, appears to have additive reliability. References